Brief breakdown
Create a visualisation of the journey travelled
Show both elevation lost and gained during exercise
Create an elevation system that shows elevation at any point during the journey.
Bonus
Also try and create some type of gamification process for this part of the app
Research
In order to completely understand the problems that can be addressed by developing a elevation system, but also some sort of gamification for this feature, I fleshed out a research strategy that helped me determine,
- who am I developing the feature for?
- how important is this feature?
- what are the existing solutions that has worked or failed? (competitor analysis)
Why is elevation important?
To exercise at high altitude means working in an environment with reduced atmospheric pressure. The oxygen tension of the inspired air is therefore decreased, that is, there is atmospheric hypoxia. Exercise increases oxygen requirements which must now be met in the face of this decreased oxygen driving pressure.
Key findings from research
I decided to speak to my fitness friends (some having a background in sport science and sport therapy), about elevation and how it can help them in there workouts.
They stated to me that elevation would be great for numerous activities, mountain biking and mountain climbing being some of those, they also expressed that they think this could be a great feature for extreme sports such as skiing, snowboarding and other mountain side sports.
These findings are important, it shows that this feature is something that users would definitely like to see integrated into their workout summary.
Competitor analysis
The competitors that I looked into were all apps that I felt did a part of what Prevayl can do, but none that can do everything. I felt this was quite an interesting, mostly because looking into the industry there aren't many apps that have the same process, unless using a smart watch of some kind.
Ideation
Introducing streaks
Streaks is a competitive concept that allows our users to not only work on themselves, but also gives them incentive to make a change everyday. this is a great way of gamifying a process for our users, by holding themselves accountable for there own streak.
showing our users other members awards.
This feature is to show the community of the prevayl app whilst also making it competitive to our users. showing other awards in your area gives you a reason to aim for better, and potentially can help our users go the extra mile.
Hi-fi wireframe
for the Hi-fi wireframe, I chose to use the small UI kit that I had created to help me create a consistent design, and to keep colours and typeface sizes the same.
The UI kit created wasn't that large, due to me creating pages to fit within a certain style, I also chose to not use icons or that much imagery within the UI designs.
I created a base framework for designs and began to create a UI that I thought was quite close to the existing Prevayl tone of voice, while also adding my own flare.
Throughout designing the screens I made sure to apply anything i had learnt to the designs, this meant making sure any information I assumed to be important to be prominent within the design.
Slight changes made through out the process of creating the Ux, like the above shown. I felt that the left may be a more sleek design in terms of UI, but in terms of usability may not be the best for our users. I understand that seeing a map of your journey travelled can be important for many reasons, but mixing that with elevation
What I learnt
As a person who is trying to become better with fitness myself, I find the concept of elevation interesting. It was informing and working on this project was more interesting and engaging than I expected it to be. Moving forward I would love to have been able to test and iterate this feature.
When it came to gamifying the data for elevation I found it quite difficult to ideate a concept, due to how the app would record data. For example if a user were to do a workout in high rise flats, how would the elevation be recorded, this would be important to know for future elevation projects.
With me only having a few days for this project, I had to make sure that I put my time and effort into the correct places. I chose to focus on the UI and understanding the use of elevation within the app. Identifying why elevation was important to our users, was something that I had to wrap my head around, (even speaking to friends within the fitness and sports fitness trade).